Practicality

They come to choose some souvenirs for themselves. Trinkets, small pieces of reality.

Every one of them.

Mycroft, naturally, is the first to come: on the very same day. He'd like to have the skull, but I cannot let him do that. Our friends' friends are our friends too, and so on, and so on. Besides, I don't want him to find that last pack of cigarettes, taped on the inside of the cranial dome.

Instead of the skull, I present him with the gun, and three packets of bullets. All fakes.

He seems glad.

It gets easier after that. Mrs. Hudson takes only that purple shirt she'd liked on him so much. Lestrade and his gang make do with little things: a half-used ball-pen; a printout of one of his articles with some illegible remarks scribbled on the edges; a blood test result (tox-screen, positive) bearing Anderson's signature, crumpled into a ball. To the homeless girl that always hangs around I give the equivalence of the money he had in his wallet, in small notes. She takes them without hesitation and nods, as if it was the most natural thing that could happen to her.

In one week I meet more people than I had during the whole course of our acquaintance. Everybody has something to say to me about him: an anecdote, an observation, a good advice.

I don't have the least inclination to listen to it.

I find no strength in me to say: "no" to them.

I grow gradually cold, numb and detached from everyone and everything. I half-listen to the monotonous, oh-so-proper babble of people I know nothing about, I reach without looking into a box in which I'd gathered a handful of unimportant objects, I give the thing I've pulled out to the deeply grateful supplicant.

I feel absolutely empty.

It will always be this way from now on, I realize one morning, watching as the white cloud of milk whirls into my cup. The realization doesn't make me feel bad.

Naturally, I'm wrong. Completely, utterly, perfectly wrong.

"Hello, John."

It's been a month. What seemed to be an endless flow of gravediggers, sniffing on the trail of my friend's remains, had dried out long ago—and in that first moment this is what I find most taxing: why on Earth did she wait so long?

It's not until a moment later that I realize—she shouldn't even be here in the first place.

"Are you mad, Irene?"

"And a pleasure to see you, too, good doctor. Do I smell the coffee?"

She makes herself comfortable in the same armchair she'd occupied before. She sits with her legs tucked up softly against her body, quite at ease: as if it was her own house, her own space. In a way, I suppose it is.

If I had the least bit of energy left in me, I would probably tell her to get the hell out of there and leave.

For a while, we simply sit there, in our armchairs, and let our eyes wander over the furniture and the walls. The silence becomes dense, thick, crushing me and wearing me out with its physicality; my nerves are strung up tight and I feel like a stupid kid, listening in on a grownups' conversation he gets nothing from.

"Irene," I finally say, not really knowing where I'm heading with this sentence, "I'm very grateful for your visit—"

"Didn't your mother tell you it's not very nice to lie?" she interrupts me with a lopsided, ironic grin. "Especially to women? Even those who are generally considered dead?"

"I never would have thought you'd be the one to appreciate the old, rusty structures of interpersonal communication."

Irene raises her eyebrows, dark, thin, perfectly shaped: skill meets nature. "He taught you well."

"Well," I shrug, still angry, but slowly moving down to the well-known torpor. "Those particular classes have been cancelled."

"Until further notice."

"If you wish to deceive yourself like that." I don't give a damn about what she wants. "If that's all there is—"

"Does this mean I'm not allowed to choose anything for myself?"

I have mastered the shrug to the point at which I qualify for an Olympic medal. "Be my guest. Just stay away from the violin and the skull."

"Don't worry, John," she smiles at me warmly heading into his bedroom, from which she emerges a moment later, holding a grey-green blazer in her hands. "I'm ruled by pragmatism rather than sentimentality."

"I expected nothing less from you."

Irene watches me for a moment, focused, although there's a small smile dancing in the corner of her mouth. "I'll be seeing you, doctor."

"Goodbye, Miss Adler."

In the evening I check the weather forecast online. It's only the middle of September, but they say it's going to get cold rather rapidly within the next ten days. I remember Irene's words, and a cold, vicious shudder runs down my back.

I'm ruled by pragmatism.

She took only the blazer. One of his favourites. Perhaps she didn't know that, or… Or.

He wouldn't have done it.

Really?...

It's too late to run outside and ask the neighbours about the dark-haired woman who left this house with a blazer in her arms. Too late to make up for a mistake I shouldn't have made in the first place, not given everything I learnt from him. I let myself get tricked like a schoolboy.

Starting from the next morning, I begin to pay close attention to the Londoners' outer wear.

I notice the grey-green blazer not two months later, as I'm queuing at Starbucks. I go pass a couple of people and get close to a slim, dark-haired individual who has just reached the counter. "Should I feel relieved, irritated, or disappointed right now?"

Irene Adler turns around to face me with a unrepentant, yet understanding smile. "You tell me. What will you have?"

"A double espresso with soy milk. And let me pay."

We sit down at a small table by the window, pushing the trash left on it by the previous customers under the sill. Irene drinks her Chai Latte with little sips, fingers tightened around the big, white mug.

"You thought I knew something."

I nod, not meeting her eyes. I look at the tourists outside, hoards of clueless people wandering tirelessly around my city. "I did."

"I'm sorry, John. He didn't tell me anything."

"But you did keep in touch."

"You know we did."

"All this time?"

"Until the day when he… jumped."

"He didn't just jump. Everything points to the fact that he really is dead, Irene."

She lets out a short, amused laugh, and for a second covers my wrist with her hand, warmed up by the tea. "I wouldn't be so sure of that."

"How long must I wait?!" I scream at her, and regain my control a moment later: nothing happened, though; nowadays one is always and forever alone, even inside one of the busiest cafés in the heart of London. "How long?"

Irene tilts her head and takes another sip. A bit of milk foam sticks to her upper lip, making her look gorgeous, like an innocent little girl. "Do you have to be somewhere?..."

We see each other fairly regularly, though we never actually plan it. Irene appears at Baker Street without notice, or meets me somewhere "downtown": always by mere accident, naturally. We don't talk much, if we do at all. We drink coffee, watch the river or feed the squirrels in the park. Simple things, shared by two simple people.

We watch one another closely, looking for any signs of clues, changes, irregularities.

We never find anything.

I do not wish to spend the holidays with my sister. Mrs. Hudson, on the contrary, leaves to see her family.

Mid-December I meet Irene at Harrods's: she's buying Yorkshire Tea, loose leaf, not bagged.

I'm not even sure how and why the invitation slips through my lips.

She doesn't answer me straight away. She doesn't look like she'd like to join me.

Alas.

She comes over two hours ahead of schedule. I'm in the shower.

She doesn't mind.

I'm not sure what to expect. Some sort of promiscuity, for sure, a perversion of a level I'm not (was not) accustomed to.

She surprises me.

Most of all—by spending the night.

After breakfast on Boxing Day we silently start to pack the things from Sherlock's bedroom away. His name has somehow shrunk back to a size that lets us put it in our mouths, twirl our tongues around it, chew it carefully and spit it out with a short surge of breath.

She tells me, slowly and hesitantly, about the last time they met. By the end of it we're both chuckling like crazy kids, curled up under a blanket with a bottle of wine which we share like students or hippies; like people we've never been. Then, yes, some elements of debauchery and perversion do appear.

I don't mind.

We don't make a great big secret out of it, but we also don't flaunt our relationship (if such simple a word can describe the complexity of our feelings). We don't "go out" together. I don't buy her flowers. She doesn't make tea, or cook, God forbid (I'm not sure I'd be ready to take that risk). I cannot say I miss her. I know Irene doesn't miss me.

On February 14 I bump into her at a liquor store. I nudge her playfully with my elbow; she rolls her eyes. "I've got scotch," I tell her. "Pretty good. Tastes of vanilla."

"I hate scotch. Smells like mice."

"Give me a chance. You're going to like this one."

She gives me an incredulous look, but doesn't protest.

"What will you do when he comes back?"

We're lying on the floor under the table, not entirely undressed and rather drunk. Irene doesn't ask: "what will we do?"; she doesn't say: "if he comes back".

Perhaps she's rather more sober than I thought.

"I will punch him in the face."

She nods with that over-stressed gravity of drunks. "Fair enough."

"What will you do?"

"I'll invite him for dinner. I'll wear sky-high heels. And then I'll kick him."

"Not in the ankle."

"You bet."

For a few minutes we simply roar with laughter, rolling around the carpet until we're completely out of breath. Irene is the first to calm down, to stretch out her arms. I touch her with glee: she's something known, but still rather exotic, like a half-domesticated cat. Siamese, no doubt about that.

"It will be the happiest day of my life," I say, letting my body take control. Irene sighs and bows her head onto my shoulder. It might have been a nod.

"I'm sure it will."

It's been six months, and our meeting grow sparse, further apart. It's the reasonable thing to do: Irene is always running after—or from—something; I got a job, not a very interesting one, but I try to give my patients all the time they need.

In the middle of July, my phone rings. Some guy from an independent publishing house wants to ask whether I'd be interested in publishing a selection of my most interesting blog entries. The public has long forgotten about the whole Richard Brook affair, and there are new people reading my blog. Perhaps it'd be good to remind the people of Sherlock Holmes, and so on, the whole drill. If it's alright with me, he could send one of his editors over to discuss the details?...

The editor turns out to be a blonde by the name of Morstan. Mary Morstan.

We get married by the end of the year.

I spend my so-called stag night at Irene's. "Are you free?" she asks, letting me out of her arms.

I roll over, following her, and bite at her shoulder.

"Never."

When Sherlock Holmes knocks on my door at 221B Baker Street almost two years later, I do not punch him in the teeth. I don't, because I'm holding my daughter in my arms. It's a reasonable thing to do—hold your instincts at bay.

Instead I move aside and let him in. I follow him, in no hurry, and calmly put the child down in her crib.

Sherlock is standing in the middle of the room, looking around and frowning at family pictures and baby clothes crowding the place. "I see you've been busy. All those changes—" He turns around, straight into my right hook.

He's silent for a moment, feeling up his injured jaw. His eyes are warm, laughing, or perhaps it's just the light of my daughter's night-lamp playing tricks with me.

"Some things haven't changed, I see."

I roll my eyes. What does one say in a moment like this?

"Come on, you idiot. I'll make you some coffee."

He's a very busy—and very in demand—man, but it doesn't mean he's forgotten about his old friends. Not a week since his return, I'm in the kitchen, alone (Mary has taken the child upstairs, I can hear them laughing in the bathroom), when the phone rings. There's traffic audible at the other end, the never ending pulse of a grand capitol. I know only one person that uses public telephone booths anymore. "Irene?"

"If you have any ice in your freezer, would you be so kind and throw it away now?"

I roar with laughter, and obediently empty a tray of cold cubes that could easily bring a relief to hurting body parts into the sink. "I suspect the dinner went well, then?"

"Oh, I wouldn't say that…"

We laugh, and then we fall silent for a few moments, listening to our breaths mingling in the receiver. Somewhere behind Irene's back an ambulance roars.

"Goodnight, John."

"I'll see you, Irene."

"No ice?"

I raise my head from my book and bite on the inside of my cheek to stop from grinning. "There was some, but it was old, so I threw it away."

Sherlock turns to me a little slower than usual, slightly bent at the waist. I need to have Irene show me those heels someday. "Why would you throw ice away?!"

I shrug and go back to my book, pretending to be unfazed by his obvious discomfort. "I have a daughter now, Sherlock, and I'm responsible for the quality and freshness of all the things I keep in my house. Even the ice. What if she gets a fever, and Mary moistens her lips with an ice cube full of bacteria? Don't overreact, please." I turn a page over.

"It's a simple matter of practicality."

The End